“For how long we’ve had the carts, it’s hard to believe this is your first trip to the surface on them,” Olza said as the daylight of a summer afternoon drew near.

  “I got held up there for a bit.”

  “True. Do you still feel anxious about going to the surface?”

  “Not so much. I had a lot to process, I think.”

  Olza patted Hans’ hand as the cart exited the tunnel and stopped when the wedge-shaped vehicle was level with the ground. When Hans used the tunnel last, the passage had only just opened and was little more than a large hole in the ground. With the tunnel widened and the track in place, the fenced-in space immediately around the entrance felt a lot like the ferry platform down below.

  Two tusks helped Hans, Olza, and the four other passengers out of the cart while another group patiently waited nearby for the signal to board. A Gomi guard with an armorback stood watch, which today meant laughing along with a husband and wife waiting their turn to take a wagon full of venison down to Leebel’s Rest. Five adventurers, likely in town for the Games, waited behind them.

  The rest of the town didn’t feel as busy as it had when the refugees first arrived, likely because most of them had permanently relocated to the dungeon, but the streets still bustled more than the Gomi Hans saw when he was new to town.

  “The New Gomi sun isn’t warm,” Olza said, her eyes closed as she let the rays wash over her. “I didn’t put that together before. Gods, a warm sun feels amazing.”

  “It does make a difference,” Hans agreed. “Want to head out to the Tribelands first?”

  “That walk sounds lovely,” she replied, accepting Hans’ arm.

  Hans and Olza had come to the surface largely for the change of scenery, but both had items they wished to retrieve from their previous dwellings. The Gomi guild hall had several books that Hans wanted to relocate to Leebel’s Rest. Most of them were adventure-related, but he had a few Haynu novels stashed up here he wanted to retrieve as well. For Olza’s part, she too wanted to pick up some books and a few tools from her lab.

  They both knew that maintaining two dwellings wasn’t worthwhile in the long term, so this effort was part of permanently clearing out their things to make the spaces available for others.

  The guild apartment would become a general-purpose accommodation for anyone in the Association who needed it. If Hans was topside for a few days, for example, he would sleep there, but it would no longer be his, operating much like a dorm bed.

  The future of Olza’s potion shop had yet to be determined, but one family was interested in turning it into a general store of sorts, providing basic necessities to citizens as well as travelers. Technically, Olza had purchased that land outright when she moved to town years ago, but selling it didn’t feel right when she got her new home for free.

  Well, not truly free. The price for that home was a big one, but she and Hans tried not to talk about Bel and Lee if they could help it.

  The guards at the back gate waved to Hans and Olza as they passed through. A little more than halfway across the clearing that surrounded the town, as they approached the shady road that cut through the forest and later emptied into farmlands, Hans stopped abruptly. Olza took a few more steps and paused, looking back.

  “Something wrong?”

  Hans looked at the ground around him, confused. “I…”

  Olza wrinkled her face and came back. “What is it?”

  “Umm…” Hans took three steps backward and then walked forward again. He stopped at the same exact point. “I… I can’t go any farther.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m telling my feet to move forward. They won’t. When I try to push myself to, it feels like…” Hans paused to think. “It feels like this is the edge of a cliff, and stepping off will be the end of me.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  Hans shook his head.

  “You’ve also not visited the surface since.”

  “That’s true.” Hans moved away from his invisible cliff. “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “The dungeon roots. This is as far as I’ve pushed them.”

  “This exact point?”

  “I have to confirm that, but yeah, I think so. I can’t go beyond the dungeon roots.”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than that?” Olza proposed.

  “Maybe. Mind if we go out the front gate and see what happens?”

  Though the pair had only just exited, the guards greeted them again cheerfully nonetheless. Hans and Olza crossed town and went out the front gate.

  “I stopped these roots halfway to the treeline,” Hans said before venturing down the road toward Osare. “I remember that clearly.”

  “Shall we?”

  Hans took a deep breath. “This is one of those things where I don’t want to know the answer. If it is the roots… Does that mean I can’t leave Gomi ever again?”

  “We shouldn’t assume the worst, not so soon.”

  “I feel like I know that’s the answer, like I know there’s a cliff edge out there too.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  After thinking, Hans said, “It’s better to know. I guess.”

  The walk to the midway point between the gate and the treeline was slow, like the journey to the gallows. Hans’ heart raced as he neared the line he held in his mind.

  Three steps.

  Two steps.

  One.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Hans’ body refused to go any farther.

  Olza looked around, as if trying to see the same line for herself. “This doesn’t make sense. The zouts have gone all around the kingdom. The sedimanders came to the surface to dig the trench around the Tribelands.”

  “They’re dungeon-grown, but they aren’t connected to the core. I’m more than a product of the dungeon.”

  “...like you’re part dungeon core now?”

  Hans shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. I do know I can’t go farther than this. If I push the roots more and try again, that will prove it. I’m pretty certain already, though.”

  “Are you okay?”

  For a long pause, Hans took in his surroundings–the old-growth trees, the summer wind, the birds chirping, the clear blue sky, and the warm sun. “I decided a while back that I was staying in Gomi, but I didn’t expect that to mean never being able to leave whatsoever.”

  No short vacations to Osare or Kohei. No visits to Hoseki with Olza or for business with the royal family. No seeing and exploring the frontier. Being an adventurer meant the freedom to roam, to explore new places and to experience new things. Having that suddenly stripped away was like being shackled to the wall again in Leebel’s Rest.

  He was an adventurer. What kind of adventurer didn’t adventure?

  Thinking on it, Hans was an adventurer. He was not one any longer, not since the dungeon core brought him back as whatever he was now. By other standards, he stopped being an adventurer as soon as he transitioned to teaching full-time, years back in Hoseki.

  “I should be thankful,” he said, still having not moved from where the invisible border of the dungeon roots halted him. “I could just be dead and done with it.”

  “That’s true,” Olza replied.

  How far can I extend the roots of the dungeon core?

  New Quest: Learn more about the limits of the dungeon roots.

  Hans put a hand on Olza’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about this. We were supposed to have a nice day on the surface.”

  “I’m not upset. I’m thankful we can have this conversation. Come on. Let’s get our stuff and head back to Leebel’s.”

  Taking one long look down the road to Osare, Hans nodded and followed Olza back through the front gate.

  As the Gomi Games drew nearer, Hans wondered if any of the dungeon monsters had a disguise ability. He could use shadow scorpion camouflage, but that meant being kind of invisible, which was more extreme than he wanted. As the number of adventurers stopping him to ask about his death and his resurrection grew, though, the more he considered using it anyway.

  Or he could Shapeshift into an animal. There were a few sparrows and crows who had somehow found their way down the tunnel to nest in the dungeon, but those were still novel sights in Leebel’s Rest, making them poor disguises. Worse yet, a few of the families who moved from the surface brought their cats. Coming back to life only to die again because a savvy barn cat ambushed him would be pretty damn embarrassing.

  He hadn’t worked up the bravery to use a mimic’s version of Shapeshift, so that was kind of an option. Beyond his general fear of what that would feel like, turning into an inanimate object felt a lot like hiding behind a curtain and hoping no one noticed his feet sticking out from beneath.

  Though the roots had grown out of his rooftop deck as he requested, Hans had one more major errand that could only be completed by visiting the dungeon core room itself. He was thankful for the excuse to get out of the city and away from the tourists, even if just for a few hours.

  As he requested, the dungeon core had grown stairs to turn the drop-off from the fissure into an easy walk down or up–no more using the rope to get in and out. Confirming the stairs gave him hope for one more test, one that could mean even greater peace of mind for the safety of the dungeon core and Gomi as a whole. If it worked.

  Quest Complete: Confirm whether the stairs and the deck roots grew as intended.

  Instead of crawling through the fissure to enter the chamber, as he had done hundreds of times before, Hans pressed himself into the dungeon wall. His cave crawler ability slowly phased him into the solid stone.

  This was the first time he attempted doing this with his whole body. He had gone up to his shoulder and his waist in two previous experiments but never his chest and head.

  The wet sand feeling slowly engulfed his senses as he pressed through the surface. When his head was fully submerged in the stone, what he expected to be total darkness felt more like an otherworldly fog. To say he could see in the literal sense wasn’t accurate. There was no light for his eyes to take in, but yet, Hans understood his surroundings.

  It was almost like being in a familiar room with his eyes closed. His physical vision didn’t see the furniture and tables, but his mind could recreate it. Where that experience in life naturally brought with it hesitation and uncertainty, Hans had no such feelings about his new cave crawler perspective.

  From inside the dungeon wall, he was aware of where the solid material surrounding him ended. He understood where the walls, floor, and ceiling of the dungeon hallways stood, but he couldn’t see beyond those edges into the hallways themselves.

  Hans slid out the other side of the wall, ending up at the top of the stairs leading down to the dungeon core. Grateful not to have died inside of the wall, Hans ventured into the room and sat next to the black cube encasing the dungeon core.

  “I hope the long-distance relationship is okay with you,” Hans joked out loud as if the dungeon core could respond. “I’ll still visit in person from time to time, I’m sure, but I’ll feel a lot better knowing that no one else can.”

  Setting a hand on a bundle of roots, Hans closed his eyes. First, he willed the dungeon to close the fissure. He pictured the cracks in the stone surface healing and smoothing over until that wall was as solid as the other seven in the room. Next, he pushed his energy into expanding the roots around Gomi.

  Hans paused roughly halfway into dumping his mana pool into the roots. Having more room on the surface to roam was important to him, but the idea for another experiment came to mind.

  Thinking deeply, he told the dungeon core to grow something new and to put it in one of the abandoned houses down the street from his Leebel home. With that suggestion complete, he resumed growing the roots.

  New Quest: Confirm the results of your dungeon growth experiment.

  He stopped when the hints of feeling faint and lightheaded reached his senses. When Hans opened his eyes, he was drenched in sweat as if he had sparred hard for the last hour. Learning his limits was a work in progress, and he was proud of himself for knowing to stop before he was completely exhausted.

  The fissure was still there, but he knew the dungeon core would rectify that in the next reset. He slipped through it once more for old time’s sake and navigated Dunfoo’s dungeon security, locking the door to the core behind him. Other than Olza, Hans had no intention of telling anyone that he closed the fissure. If someone broke through Dunfoo’s wards, even someone like Mazo, they would find nothing but dungeon wall on the other side.

  The core was safer if no one knew to expect that obstacle.

  At the door to New Gomi, Hans had another thought. Instead of walking through the doorway, he pressed himself into the dungeon wall. Once he had phased completely into the stone, he swam beneath Luther Land. In his previous test an hour or so ago, the dungeon hallway was empty, but New Gomi was full of life.

  He still couldn’t see out of the walls or up through the ground at what was happening in those open spaces, but he could see the feet of the guards and their armorbacks. The view offered no more than a silhouette, like a hand pressed against glass with nothing else visible but the dark shadow of the palm and fingers. When one of the guards lifted a foot, the silhouette disappeared. It reappeared a moment later when he set it back down.

  Those movements gave Hans a vague sense of how large the rest of the person was, but the information was crude, like he was assessing the weight of a neighbor stomping around the apartment upstairs.

  The world as seen by a cave crawler.

  Hans decided that stepping out of the wall next to the guards would be cruel, as it would only frighten them. If they were frightened, they might tell the armorbacks to attack, which was a whole other kind of problem, so he resolved to move farther into New Gomi before exiting the earth again.

  But he never did. He liked the quiet and the peace of existing in a space adjacent to the rest of the dungeon, so he stayed in the ground and swam all the way back home.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

  Complete the next volume (Bronze to Silver) for “The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers.”

  Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Relocate the titan bones to the dungeon entrance.

  Master your Diamond boon.

  Get Dunfoo the materials he needs for a Holy enchantment.

  Learn more about the limits of the dungeon roots.

  Confirm the results of your dungeon growth experiment.